PECO incurs $45 million in Irene costs

Property owners aren’t the only ones staring at Hurricane Irene bills.

Those wires that fell in your neighborhood are costing utility companies, too.

PECO estimates its hurricane bill at $45 million, the company said yesterday, accumulated through damage to 316 poles, 1,509 cross arms, 278 transformers, 90 miles of wire, 5,019 insulators and 11,001 fuses.

The Inquirer reports the company hired more than 1,500 outside contractors to get service back to more than 500,000 customers who experienced outages during Irene. We tracked local damage through our Extreme Weather Center.